Sorry to lead off with a cheesy Facebook image, but I guess that starts us off with the end of my title. I arrived nice and early so I could be on the "ropeline" so to speak (small fences, actually, whatever). Unfortunately, my camera battery was rather low and burned out just about a single minute before Wes and Ned showed up. Ah well, follow me below the fold for the textual awesomeness that ensued, images or not. Oh, and it's Gam
pel, stupid Facebook.
So I got to the rally location at roughly 11:45 (the rally planned to start at 12:30). I sit around for a bit, meet the president of Student Democrats and finally get on their mailing list, good general stuff. I spend some time talking to a kid who was a little uninformed politically but liked the ideals of the Democratic party, and was a Lamont fan (an uninformed voter Lieberman
hasn't grabbed up? Crazy, I know).
They were blasting music through the speakers, likely to draw people's attention and test the sound system. Good stuff, so I did a nice job making a karaoke-fool out of myself singing to "Born in the USA", "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours", etc. Helped a little old lady in a wheelchair hand out Lamont stickers. When offering them to people one guy said, "We'll see after his speech"; I think it's safe to say Ned won his vote today. Laughed at a guy's ratty sweater listing the things he said "NO" (in large bold black letters) to about the Bush administration. Learned a new campaign slogan for Wesley Clark from s'more little old ladies.
U-WES-A! U-WES-A! Got a Lamont t-shirt and sign. It was all very political and got my blood flowing (which is helpful for the cold of Autumn here in CT).
As the rally area started to fill up a small crowd of "Vote Joe" and "Joe 06" folks showed up (what a surprise) to crash the party. The somewhat uninformed fella' I had spoken with earlier started yelling at them, but I told him to calm down. Noted to a couple (rather cute, actually) girls standing next to me that their appearance made Lieberman look even worse, the sad and rare white "Vote Joe" signs drowned out by a sea of blue Lamont.
Things finally started, a bit late, 12:45ish. The Student Democrats prez made the first introduction, starting a joke many repeated thanking the people with "Vote Joe" signs for supporting local
Congressional candidate Joe Courtney. That got a few laughs the first time, but got a bit old the third or fifth. He introduced the local state Senator, who in turn introduced the Democratic Majority Leader (here's hoping that's a phrase we start using more often) of the CT House. He,
Chris Donovan, gave a nice and rousing speech about the need for change and that with Senators sitting for 6 years now was the time to act. Finally, he ended by starting up a chant of "What do you want? We want Ned! We want Ned!" and brought up the main act.
(it was at about this time I popped my lens cap to get ready and noticed the empty battery sign on my camera) Clark and Lamont started working their way down the fence/ropeline. I shook Clark's hand, I shook Ned's hand, it was great. Lamont took the mic first, repeated the Vote Joe (Courtney) joke, and got right into things. He was quick to remind people of the NIE, that (in his words) "the best estimate of our intelligence agencies across the nation is that this war is weakening America and the war on terrorism." He was also quick to jump on Lieberman's "In a time of war we undermine the president's credibility at our nations peril", contrasting Lieberman with Truman and JFK to whom he has compared himself.
"Harry Truman helped found those international bodies, the United Nations and NATO [gesturing towards Clark], that you walked away from Mr. Lieberman." He also quoted Kennedy in reponse to Lieberman's other comparison, saying "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." This was a theme repeated by Clark a little later. Lamont pointed to
Schwarzkopf, he pointed to Murtha, he pointed to oh-so-many people who came out against the war, and jokingly referred to them as "those partisans against the war" as a strike against Bush's seeming theory that being opposed to his policies makes you partisan. He said, "A lot of people have been asking me why I'm spending so much time with the generals and the troops. Our president led us to war without listening to them, and that's why we're in the mess we are now. That's why I'm listening to them." Lamont then introduced Clark to wild applause, much of it mine.
Clark continued Lamont's notes about never fearing to negotiate. He too jumped on the NIE and what it showed about this country. "Stay the course doesn't work when you're in a ditch," Clark said and, "Joe Lieberman wasn't the one driving us into that ditch, but he was... kind of supporting the elbow of the driver." Clark also tore into Bush's campaign that Democrats were "weak" in some way. He noted that under a Democrat we won in Bosnia without losing an American life and won in Kosovo, saving one and a half million Albanians, by crushing Milosivec between "the hammer of air power and the anvil of diplomacy", again without losing one American life. He noted that the Democrat who attacked Bin Laden and left plans behind was derided by Republicans of the time and is willing to admit he "didn't do enough" because he didn't get him; while the Republican in the chair did nothing with any of the plans, experts, or ideas given to him for 8 months, but tries to act like his opponents are weak on security.
Clark closed up listing all the things Democrats winning back the Senate could do for this country and said "right now it's not about 2008, it's about 2006!" (a little voice in my head said 'Damn' right then, I had a wish in the back of my mind that Clark would announce today and in CT for some reason) Clark got down off the podium, walked the line again and this time I got my pen ready and got him to sign my Lamont sign. I shook his hand, patted him on the shoulder , begged him to run, and he just smiled. I hung around for a bit, stood on tip-toes over cameramen to watch a news conference with Lamont and Clark a bit later, and noticed I'd also managed to lose my lens cap somewhere in the crowd.
So, I didn't get any really excellent photos, I probably lost my lens cap, I just found out I didn't bring my battery charger to school for some reason. But damn it was a good day. I shook that man's hand and I heard him defend what he thought with every bit of measured strength and intelligence he had. I watched him breathe further life into a serious netroots candidate. I had a good day today.